


The Witch's Curse

by rotrude



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, First Time, M/M, Romance, Season/Series 04, Witch Curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 21:10:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2521922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrude/pseuds/rotrude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgana concocts yet another evil plan designed to kill her brother. This time it involves Merlin and a spot of lycanthropy. Written for the Tavern_tales October theme: Curses, Hauntings, Harvests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Witch's Curse

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the ever lovely and gracious archaeologist_d. Thank you ever so much!

The full moon shines over the top of the beech trees, turning their boles silver, and across the grass, glimmering in the mosses. Moon dust drifts in the air like swirls of snow in midwinter, shimmers, sets the sharp night air alight. It washes the forest pale, drenches it with its ghostly glow. The black grass waves in the wind as the wolf steps into the clearing.

It's thin and scraggly, whiplike, its ribs sticking out. Its dark fur is caked with dirt, but peppered with silver underneath. Its paws are bloody. The beast is trembling, shaking in place, looks like it might keel over. But the fight hasn't left it, not in the least. When it sights them, it bares its fangs, lips drawn all the way back till the bone of its jaw shines white. It snarls.

From the top of his horse, Leon steadies his crossbow on his arm, its butt against his shoulder, and points it at the animal. 

The wolf lowers its tail, noise rolls from its throat, primal, low.

Leon releases the safety.

A shaft of moonlight bathes the beast in its pallid glow and its eyes shine a deep blue, the colour of the sea in winter, a hue Arthur knows well, would pick out among a thousand.

“Don't shoot!” Arthur shouts, voice sharp as shards of glass. “It's Merlin.”

“Arthur,” Leon says, lowering the weapon a notch, a weapon that's still cocked. “That's the wolf that's been terrorising Camelot for weeks. The wolf we've been trailing for just as long, not Merlin.”

“No, not Merlin at all,” Gwaine says, low and gritty, unsheathing his sword, his jaw set, as hard as steel. “That's the thing that killed Merlin.”

“And the hunter we sicced on it,” Leon says. “That's not Merlin.”

With an eye on the growling wolf, Arthur dismounts. “Don't ask me how I know, but that is my manservant. “

“With all due respect, sire,” Leon says, targeting the wolf again, “I believe you're not thinking clearly. The loss of Merlin has clouded your judgment.”

“No,” Arthur says, holding his hand up, taking one careful step towards the beast.

“Sire,” Elyan says, reining his horse closer to Gwaine's. “Think about it. How could that thing possibly be Merlin?”

Arthur doesn't know, has no idea. At the same time something is tugging at his guts, and his heart too if he's quite honest, and that something tells him the wolf's Merlin. “Perhaps it's magic that's done it,” he says, and he doesn't know if he believes it or if he's just trying to appease his trigger-happy knights. “After all, magic is responsible for all manner of evil.”

As Arthur advances, the wolf goes rigid, its fangs out, its fur standing on end. Still, Arthur keeps edging towards it, his boots sinking into the soil, his palm out. As he does, he realises he's been using the same caution he exercises around spooked horses, except he's not facing a horse here, but a much more feral animal. He'd better remember that. 

“Arthur,” Leon says, and it doesn't take a great amount of empathy guess he's getting worried.

“Only shoot if I order you to,” Arthur says, talking to his knights while looking down at the wolf, making calming noises at it. “Is that understood, Leon?”

“Yes, sire,” Leon says, sighing.

A twig gives under Arthur's weight, and the wolf snaps its teeth at him. Arthur's close. Making his moves overt, slow, he reaches out his hand. “Hey,” he says, inching onto his knees. His trousers get soggy with the fresh dew that beads the grass. “Hey, Merlin, trust you to get into such a bind, eh.”

The wolf's rictus expands, until it's all clenched jaw and glinting fangs. It crouches lower as if it's about to pounce. Maybe it is. 

Right, right, perhaps he shouldn't tease a snarling wolf the way he does his manservant, but if Merlin's in there somewhere, trapped into the beast, then he may recognise this, the ebb and flow of their customary exchanges. “Right, Merlin?” he continues, as he slowly puts his hand out so the wolf can smell his intentions off his skin. He was once told wolves could detect fear. He hopes it's not true. “Right?”

The wolf sniffs at his feet, at his fingers. Arthur can feel its warm breath as it wooshes in and out of its spare, rangy frame. He can sense its wet muzzle as it moves across his knuckles.

Arthur barely breathes; his heart beats faster. It thuds in a serrated rhythm that pounds in his ears and even at his fingertips. 

A noise to his left makes Arthur's head turn sharply round. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he spies Gwaine, sword held high. Before he can tell the idiot to fall back, the wolf has moved. The air shifts. 

With its paws, the wolf topples him, pins him to the ground, its teeth at Arthur's throat, the cold length of them sinking into his skin. As warmth trickles down his neck, Arthur's heart staggers in his chest. It stops, starts again. Makes his blood pound in his head, then drain from it all in one nauseating wave. 

The wolf's claws sink into his skin where his hauberk doesn't protect him, raising fire that wraps itself around the whole of his body. As it seeks leverage, the wolf rips skin, opens gashes, works in wounds that tear sobs out of him. Even so, Arthur feels the animal's warmth, can pick out its frantic, mad heartbeat. It's scared, more than him. When the arrow whistles, Arthur knows what to do. He wraps his arms around the wolf, buries his hands in its mangy fur, and with his legs tips it sideways.

The arrow only strips some skin from its side before burying itself in the soft earth. 

The wolf yips in pain, low, whimpery. It skids on unsteady legs as it braces outwards to get purchase. Rights itself. Its hackles are back up now, but the animal is shaking with tremors that ride his skin and rattle its bones.

Pity for it beats like a second heart inside Arthur, diluting the pain that eats at the first. “Merlin,” Arthur says, heaving himself to his haunches, extending a hand that drips with blood. “I would never hurt you.”

“Arthur, don't,” Leon says, from somewhere that is too close. “It's too dangerous.”

“I have it in my sights,” says Elyan, who has slipped behind the wolf and is now aiming an arrow at it. 

Arthur tips his chin up at Leon, facial muscles tight with strain, hurting with it. “That's Merlin. I know it.”

“Even if it is,” Leon says, though Arthur can't tell whether he believes it or not, “we cannot risk it, sire. We cannot risk a king to save the servant.” 

The words wash right over Arthur. He can see the sense in them. His people trust in him for guidance. He's the guarantor of their well-being. Without him, Camelot would be beset with dangers from all sides. His father would have said the same, like as not. But he can't abandon Merlin. He can't. Hoping the wolf will calm down, that he won't do anything to get itself shot, Arthur once again reaches out towards it.

“Merlin,” he says, “come on, come here.”

The wolf lifts its head, flicks its ears.

“That's right, Merlin,” Arthur says, watching as the wolf lowers its head. “Come on. Come to me.”

The wolf takes a step towards him, then another.

“We'll break the enchantment, Merlin,” Arthur continues, making sure not to move, not to startle the animal. “I promise you that.”

The wolf's eyes turn to gold as it lopes over to Arthur. It nuzzles his hand, sniffs it as he does. Its back is still up, but the very fact it has approached means Arthur's gained some of its trust. Arthur's sighs and his shoulders slope. 

A warm tongue snakes out, red and quick. It's warm and wet, and laves Arthur's hand clean, clean of the blood, clean of the dirt, sweeping rough and thorough over sections of broken skin. And it makes sense, Arthur thinks; the wolf's trying to patch him up as best it can. That's Merlin all right. Arthur's sure of it.

Arthur strokes the animal's side to the rhythm of its intakes of breath, sinks his fingers into the fur at the animal's neck, laughs when the wolf butts its head against his wrist, leans its fragile weight against him.

With one swift upward motion, Arthur lifts the wolf. Its sides are heaving, its frame shaking. It settles its muzzle on his shoulder. Its breathing slows to a quieter cadence. Bearing the weight of it in his arms, Arthur walks into the thick of the forest.

“Arthur,” Leon calls out, “where are you going? Sire!” 

 

**** 

Arthur staggers onwards until he reaches the banks of the stream. Then he puts the wolf down, where the earth is soft and its paws leave an imprint. Its sides dip and rise with its rapid breathing. It tries to lick its muzzle with its tongue, head lowered, hackles up in tufts.

“Even in wolf form, you're such a scaredy cat, aren't you, Merlin?” Arthur says, cupping his hands full of water from the gurgling stream. 

He pours it over the wolf's sides. The wolf whimpers but Arthur does it again and again until its wounds are clean of dirt and blood. “Give me your paw,” Arthur says, flattening his palm against his thigh. “Come on, Merlin, this is a fairly simple order. Even you should be able to execute it.”

The wolf bends its paw, tentatively lowers it onto Arthur's palm. 

“Good, that's good,” Arthur says and it sounds silly to his own ears, talking to Merlin as he would to a hound, but Merlin, or the animal part of him, seems to be soothed by it. 

Lifting a paw at a time, Arthur studies the wounds he finds under them, the source of all that caked blood he would have hoped was just a figment of his imagination. He wishes he were Gaius and had the old man's knowledge of medicine and anatomy. Or even Gwen. She's always had a knack for both comforting and nursing. Arthur fears he's good at neither, but he's all that's Merlin's got, so his impromptu skills will have to do. Logic tells him that he'd better wash these lesions, too. He's seen too many a knight die because their wounds festered; he's not about to let that happen to Merlin. Enticing the wolf to bathe its paws in the water is not as easy as it seems, however.

Though Merlin is a pretty clean person and always smells of herbs – barring those times Merlin was in for a muck cleaning session in the stables–, his wolf form isn't quite as prone to allow itself to come into contact with bodies of water. So when Arthur tries to push it in the shallows, the wolf growls.

“Right,” Arthur says, watching the wolf retreat away from the bank. “Right, no bathing.”

Changing tactics, he douses Merlin's paws as he did his sides, making sure to swab his wounds clean. When he thinks he's come close to finishing, he dries Merlin with the hem of his cloak. As Arthurs rubs at his fur, the wolf makes burring sounds, pushes itself head first at him, pressing its sides against Arthur. Arthur laughs. The fates know he has no cause to, not in this mess, but there's something about the wolf's actions that are uniquely Merlin. “Showing off your needy side, aren't you, Merlin,” Arthur says, as he tears strips of his cloak and binds Merlin's wounds, sides first, paws second. “But then again you would, you big girl.”

There are berries in the bushes, blue ones and red ones. Arthur picks a few and cradles them in his palm. “Here,” he says, knowing full well that's not wolf fare, but lacking the ability to feed Merlin properly. “Come here. Here's food, you scrawny thing.”

Merlin comes closer, sniffs his hand. 

“Oh, come on, Merlin,” Arthur says, “I realise you're a poor hunter even in feral form, but this is quite easy. You don't even need to go scavenge. Or are you too lazy to lick food off my hand?”

The wolf snaps at air, fangs glinting, and Arthur takes it for the cue it is. He compresses his lips and ducks his head, waits for Merlin to take the initiative. He laps at Arthur's hand, licks his wrist clean, causing the corners of Arthur's mouth to twitch, without touching the fruit. “My, my, aren't you a picky eater,” Arthur says, arching his eyebrows. “I promise you I'll hunt you a chicken tomorrow, lazybones.”

The wolf barks, lets out a little growl that comes from its belly. It eats off his hand, its spongy tongue touching Arthur's palm. It tickles and feels weird, but Arthur grins. When Merlin's done, Arthur cleans his hands on the remains of his cloak and goes to sit with his back to a tree. The wolf sprawls at his feet, head on its paws.

Arthur lowers his hand to its head and ruffles the fur between Merlin's ears. “I promise I'll fix you, Merlin.”

As he pets Merlin – and isn't that a strange phrase to think of – his body starts to feel heavier, throb in places. He realises he ought to have seen to his own wounds and scratches after he'd sorted Merlin out, but now he can't quite muster the willingness to go back to the stream. It's too far away and he's comfortable enough where he is. In a manner of speaking...

He closes his eyes for a moment. The darkness is welcoming, deep, devoid of any source of worry, easy to surrender to. His thoughts chase each other, stop making sense, thin. He doesn't mean to, but he falls asleep. 

When he wakes, sunlight peeks through gaps in the clouds and foliage. Honey-coloured shafts of light dart down from the sky. The depths of the forest are still shrouded in a soft milky haze but the light morning breeze that plays across fronds and grass is dispelling it. In spite of it, the air is warm, lending its heat to the packed earth underneath Arthur. 

Arthur lets his senses get used to the bright light, allows himself to remember his whereabouts. The forest, the clearing, the wolf. Right, someone turned Merlin into a wolf. He rubs at his face with his palm, sighs heavily, and sees Merlin lying across from him.

He's resting on his side, a knee drawn up, naked and pale, his body much sparer than it used to be, mostly bones, and very little meat to him at all. His head is cradled by his arm; the fingers of his hands curl loosely. The tatters of Arthur's cloak are wrapped around the meat of them while a length of the same material forms a band around his middle. He's breathing softly, but a frown is etched deep across the space between his eyes. But that's not what surprises Arthur, not with all that's happened so far. What he can't make heads or tail of is the fact that overnight Merlin has transitioned back to his human form. 

Not sure whether he's still dreaming after all, or whether the wolf was a production of his fancy, he lays a hand on Merlin's shoulder and says, “Merlin, you're a man!” 

Merlin looks down to himself, at arms and hands, touches his face with the tips of his fingers. “I am,” he says, but doesn't sound relieved and that drives a stake right through Arthur's heart. “I am.” 

“Could you please explain to me how you got yourself turned into a wolf in the first place?” Arthur says, focusing on practicalities rather than the way his lungs are constricting and he's getting all short of breath with the thought Merlin has come back to him more or less in one piece.

Merlin's face falls and Arthur silently curses himself for being the cause of that. “Morgana,” Merlin says, and his face tightens as he does.

Arthur's skin pimples. “Morgana? Morgana what, Merlin?”

Merlin shakes his head, casts his eyes down. “She cursed me.” He mumbles something else that Arthur doesn't make out, something that sounds like 'Freya'.

“Morgana turned you into a wolf?” Arthur asks, cold seeping into his bones as he contemplates the nature of the power needed to put such a curse into effect, the force that has stacked itself against Camelot. “Why would she?”

“Think about it,” Merlin says, his mouth thinning, his gaze hardening. “I've shape-shifted every night for two months. As soon as the sun goes down, I turn.” A darkness overtakes Merlin's features. “Lose control.” 

“I still don't get it,” Arthur says, not understanding why Morgana would target Merlin of all people. Merlin's harmless and one of the few good men Arthur knows. Surely, his sister wouldn't be so evil as to try to snuff that out for no reason. It's Arthur she wants and his crown, not Merlin. “What could she possibly achieve by changing you?”

“I'm close to you. I guess she was relying on me hurting you,” Merlin says, and just as he does, he notices the scrapes that still riddle Arthur's body. “And I have.”

“It's just a few scratches,” Arthur says, fully meaning to bat away Merlin's hand, but unable to when Merlin's fingers trace his skin, contour the scratches. He's gentle, using as much caution as though Arthur was some sort of fragile object that might shatter. Which is laughable really because Arthur's tough, a warrior, and he's used to weathering rough patches. Still, Merlin doesn't seem to want to take this into account.

His is the ghost of a touch really, yet for some reason Arthur can't concentrate on anything but the effect it has on him. His world breaks down to the points of contact between him and Merlin. His blood thickens in his veins. His heart takes to hurting in a way he's never experienced before. It's as if he's been run through with a sword and will never be able to staunch the leaking wound again. “It's just--”

“I hurt you, Arthur,” Merlin says, drawing back, dropping his hands. “I'm meant to protect you!”

He sounds so anguished, so broken, Arthur wants to stop it. A joyless Merlin is all wrong. It's like the world has gone topsy-turvy or something. Merlin shouldn't sound like that, ever. He's bright and irreverent and always has a smile for everyone. That's how he is. That's how he should always be. Curse Morgana, Arthur thinks or perhaps says, before grabbing Merlin's face in his hands. With one surge of the body, he fits his mouth to his.

The moment his lips touch the fleshy bow of Merlin's, Arthur realises what he's done. His eyes widen and he breathes through his nostrils. But Merlin yields and leans into Arthur. Before he can reproach himself for it, Arthur's moving his mouth over his, opening Merlin's up with nudges of lips and tongue. And then Arthur's licking into his mouth, slipping his tongue under Merlin's and sucking on it. He can't quite breathe like this, can't quite sense anything that isn't Merlin, but doesn't want it to be any different. Doesn't want to stop.

Arthur slips his hands up Merlin's back, traces the notches of his spine, curves his palm around the span of his hip. His skin is warm with the caress of the early morning sun, softer than Arthur expected, though it's covered in scratches and scrapes. It's bare, too. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that Arthur's kissing a naked man, whose cock is rising to attention. It doesn't matter that it isn't proper for a king to tumble a servant. Because this is not that. 

Arthur doesn't allow the consciousness of what this is to form in his mind, doesn't let himself poke at the thought because he knows that it's a little too much for him right now and that some truths are best left alone. But he can act. He can take this as it is. Seize the day. Let go the way he's never allowed himself to before. Over countless nights spent by Merlin's side, a campfire between them, he's kept this at bay, never truly considered it as a possibility, as something he could take. 

But now that doesn't make sense anymore. 

He can't stop anyway because Merlin's touching him like he needs Arthur, like he needs the comfort of it, like he wants the core of him. His touch is reverent, gentle, but never purposeless. It brings pleasure in its wake, seems to awake the same in Merlin for his breath comes in untidy sobs, little hisses. He's all taut, from shoulders to belly, holding in the shakes. He's crying too, Arthur thinks, because his face is wet and Arthur chasing the trail of his tears with his mouth, with the tip of his tongue. And that does something to Merlin because he emits a heavy sound and then he's toppling Arthur, stretching him down on soft grass that smells like dew, tugging at his clothes and chainmail as though he doesn't know how to take it off. 

“I would have thought that you of all people would know how to undress me,” Arthur says, taking his own chainmail off himself and wriggling out of his under-tunic.

“Shut up,” Merlin says, eyes blazing. He stops unknotting the fastenings of Arthur's trousers to knead Arthur through the fabric. “Just shut up, sire.”

Arthur lets out a shaky sigh, arches off the ground and into the touch of Merlin's palm. He pushes into his fist, feels himself go heavy, blood flooding his cock in throbs Arthur wants to quench on a stroke of Merlin's hand. A stain darkens the fabric, spreads, and Arthur knows he's leaking, leaking like a girl ready for sex and he doesn't care. Wants Merlin to bring him off. He wants for the pleasure to mount until Arthur can do nothing but be taken apart by it. He gives off a desperate chuckle, remembers a conversation from a long time ago. And it's a little bit absurd, granted, but yes, Merlin can. He can undo him. He can take him and have him and Arthur's under the impression he will just dissolve at the seams because of the beauty of this.

But Merlin stops grinding his palm against Arthur's bulge.

“You're a tease, too,” Arthur says, in a voice that's most decidedly not his, because it comes out raspy and hollow. 

Merlin doesn't say anything. He looks serious, frantic, not of a mind to latch onto the joke. He lowers Arthur's breeches but doesn't undo the fastenings properly, so they snap. Arthur wants to say, 'There you go, you clumsy oaf, can't even manage something as simple as that,' or something like that, but the words clog in his mouth because that isn't what he's thinking at all. 

He's rather lost in considering how beautiful Merlin is in that odd way of his. By all rights, Arthur ought to laugh at that. For years, Merlin's overlarge ears have been a comedy staple in Camelot. Plenty a girl has poked fun at Merlin's gauche ways. But there's beauty in the light that shines in Merlin's eyes, earnest and passionate, and oozing... affection. There's beauty in the softness of his lips and the way they shape themselves into delicate kisses that skim Arthur's face like the wings of a butterfly. And there's beauty in his devotion, in the care he takes of Arthur. 

Even the way Merlin curls his fingers around Arthur's cock is a manifestation of that. It shouldn't be. Sex isn't as gentle as this, not among men, not in Arthur's experience. But even now Merlin's checking with Arthur for signs he's doing it right, looking at him with such devotion, touching him with such a desire to please that it leaves Arthur breathless. 

It’s good, it's perfect. Merlin's fingers are slick and shiny along their length where Arthur has shed precome like a randy adolescent. Calluses that come from attending too many chores catch on the ridges of Arthur's cock, taking moans from Arthur's mouth. His hand shapes itself around Arthur, strokes him, strips him with long pulls that drive him into near oblivion. He rubs his thumb back and forth along the slit, until Arthur's blubbering incoherent things he won't want to be reminded of when this is over. Merlin's not content with only that either. He goes exploring, like Arthur's his, chases the path of a vein with his nail, skates fingertips along the head, nudges at the foreskin till he's got it sliding off in one smooth glide. 

Then he stops cold and Arthur wants to shout, wants to grab Merlin's hand and put it back on his prick. But Merlin's kissing him, soft and slow, and even though Arthur's wrung taut, sweat pouring out, his cock aching between his legs, he lets himself be gentled, be kissed with a softness that's going to break him, that's not him, that's entirely Merlin. 

With attentive hands, Merlin tips his head up and cradles his face and delves into his mouth and while there's something intense about it, it's never rough. It's a kiss drenched with Merlin, loyalty, dedication, affection, and Arthur wraps his arms around him and kisses him back in the same style. He's kissed no one like this, like they're the ending and the beginning of everything. He's kissed out of love, yet not like this. But he lets himself do it this time. 

It's over before Arthur's ready to be done with it. His face probably still bears the brunt of the openness he let himself indulge in. He dreads knowing how he looks like right now, how far down his walls have come. His face stings and he turns it. But Merlin nudges him back into place so that Arthur's looking at him. His eyes dance and Arthur sucks in a ragged breath even before Merlin wraps his lips around the head of his prick. Maybe it's because Arthur's ridden on the edge of orgasm too long, but the moment Merlin rests his cock on his tongue, orgasm builds inside him. By the time Merlin's given him one hard suck, Arthur comes. 

Before Arthur's come back down, before he's quit of the bliss that saps at his bones, Merlin's wedged himself between his legs, cock sticking out from him, red and swollen. “It can't work like this, can it?” Arthur says, the physiology of this kind of sex not lost on him, though he wants it. He even longs for the pain of it as long as he gets a few more moments with Merlin branded on his skin. Which is insane. Because it's stupid and he shouldn't want anyone like this, like it's everything, but then again it's Merlin and he does. “Merlin.” 

“Trust me,” Merlin says. A cloud passes over his face. “Do you?”

Arthur nods. He can't say yes because he has no voice. Anyway he trusts Merlin with his life and with his kingdom, so why not this?

Eyes golden in the glare of the morning sun, Merlin lines up. By inches and shifts, his cock nudges inside him. It doesn't hurt at all. Maybe it's because Arthur’s still riding his post orgasm high or because Merlin's done something clever with his fingers. He's a physician's apprentice after all. It doesn't matter how, because it works. With one clean thrust, Merlin shoves in up to the hilt. 

All a tremble, face screwed tight and all serious, he falls into Arthur's arms. Arthur wants to kiss him, wants to gentle him, wants to tell him that it's all right and he shouldn't be this wrecked. 'Come on, Merlin,' he wants to say. 'I would have thought you capable on engaging in intercourse without crying me rivers.'

But he doesn't say that either. Because he finds himself scattering kisses on Merlin's face and shoulders, splaying his legs wide while grunting in time with Merlin's motions. They shove him forwards a little bit on each pass, but Arthur plants his feet down and makes himself the shore to Merlin's tide. He's got the strength for it and if nobody anchors Merlin, shaking as he is, then he'll come apart. And who'll put him back together then?

When his rhythm gets all shot, Merlin tucks his face into Arthur's neck, fans short puffs of breath on his shoulder, roves his mouth across in little rubbing strokes. Arthur buries his hand in his hair, the other at his nape, skidding in the sweat that has pooled there. Says, “There, there,” nuzzling his temple as he does. Merlin rocks forward and back a couple more times, speeds up. Arthur cups his skull and says, “Let go. Come on, let go.” 

With a sob that's definitely helpless, Merlin comes. He does in little throbs that Arthur can feel inside him, would blush at if he wasn't talking utter nonsense to Merlin.

When he's finished, Merlin folds on top of him, body lax and heavy. 

“Don't tell me this is it,” Arthur says, finally able to couch his voice in the tone most apt to needle Merlin. “That little bit of action is what it takes to get the wind out of your sails?”

Merlin buffets him round the head, closes his eyes, says, “Shut up.”

He closes his eyes, but doesn't sleep. His breathing is too measured for that, and by and by worry lines start crisscrossing his brow.

Arthur runs a hand up his back, the long plane of it, but then stops himself and breathes in, claps Merlin on the shoulder. “We should head back to Camelot.”

Merlin snaps his head up. “No!” He's off Arthur in a moment. “I can't go back like this! I'd end up killing someone!”

Arthur face softens. “Merlin, you wouldn't harm a fly.”

“Arthur,” says Merlin, his face hard as stone, “I did. I killed a man. Remember?”

“The hunter.” Arthur breathes in. He does indeed remember the day a deputation of the citizenry came to him, asking him for a resolution to the wolf problem. He found a hunter, a man with a reputation for ruthlessness, a hundred kills on his hit list. He came into the throne room wrapped in furs, traps slung from his back, hanging one from the other in a chain. He was as large as two Percivals put together, had an eyepatch, and more scars than Arthur could count. He promised Arthur the hide of the wolf. “You were hounded. You were only defending yourself. You wouldn't hurt anyone otherwise.”

“But I don't know that, do I?” Merlin says, eyes flashing. “When I'm the wolf, I can't control myself.”

“You didn't hurt me,” Arthur says, grabbing Merlin by the wrist when he makes to vault off. 

“I saw the gashes,” Merlin says, eyeing them grimly. “You can't tell me I didn't do that!”

Arthur sucks in a breath. “You could have killed me, Merlin, but you didn't.”

“I don't know why I didn't,” Merlin tells him, widening his eyes to make a point. “I don't think when I'm a wolf. I don't make choices. I react.”

“Maybe.” Arthur bobs his head. “But your instinct was not to kill me.”

“I remember killing the hunter,” Merlin says, tipping his head back and blinking fast. “I have flashes of that... sinking teeth into flesh... a neck snapping. Tell me why I wouldn't do it again? ”

“Merlin, you were cornered,” says Arthur, digging his fingers in Merlin's wrist. “You must have had no choice.”

Merlin tears away from him, starts pacing, hugging himself. “Regardless, I can't go back to Camelot.”

“We need Gaius' help,” Arthur says, watching Merlin as he goes to and fro.

“I can't put Gaius in danger!” Merlin says, swinging round. “Or your knights. Or Gwen.”

“Fine.” While the knights walk about armed to the teeth, Guinevere doesn't. He can't put her at risk any more than he can children or the general population of Camelot. “Fine. Gaius will come here. I'm sure he'll know how to stop this curse.”

Merlin hangs his head. “What if he doesn't?”

Arthur walks up to Merlin, puts a hand on his shoulder. “He will. We'll sort this.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says, looking him in the eyes, his jaw set, his teeth harrowing his lower lip. “If it doesn't work out. I want you to kill me.”

Arthur inhales sharply, draws himself up. “We'll get to it when we get to it.”

“Arthur.” Merlin balls his fists, face clenched.

Arthur takes a step back and lowers his head. “Yes, okay, all right. Is that what you want to hear?” Arthur presses the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I'll go to talk to the knights.” He picks up the garments he took off before lying with Merlin. “Send for Gaius.” His cheeks prickle with warmth when his gaze ranges over Merlin's nakedness. “Get a change of clothes for you.”

He's gone before Merlin can change his mind and natter on about how Arthur should kill him now rather than later.

 

****

 

By the time Gaius arrives, bag of medical instruments in hand, hours have passed. The setting sun is casting the forest in a blaze of brilliant hues, reds, oranges, and purples streaking across the horizon line. Wisps of cloud lumber past, tinted rose and gold. The forest depths slowly smudge into black. 

“Merlin, my boy,” Gaius says as he waddles over, “you're alive!”

“Gaius!” Merlin says, rushing forwards towards Gaius before going stock still as he watches the sun go down. He squares his face, compresses his mouth. “Gaius, go back to Camelot. It's nearly night.”

“Nonsense,” Gaius says, walking past Arthur and going to Merlin. “I've finally found you, I'm not going to leave you in these dire straits.”

“Gaius, I've been cursed,” Merlin says, swallowing hard. 

“I know all about it,” Gaius says, placing both hands on Merlin's face and tipping it back, studying it for signs of who knows what. “Gwaine told me.”

“Gaius,” Merlin says, as Gaius pulls at the skin under his eye. “I might turn any moment.”

Gaius moves his attention to the wounds on Merlin's side and hands. “I'll take my risk, now let me make sure these don't get infected.”

“There's something else, Gaius,” Arthur says, redirecting the thread of the conversation to the most pressing matter. “We need to find a way to break the curse.”

“I don't know how to,” Gaius says, turning to Arthur with an arched eyebrow. “These are very ancient rituals we're talking about.”

“There must be a way!” Arthur says, so vehemently Gaius' other eyebrow climbs too.

“Not that I know of, unfortunately,” Gaius says, his shoulders rounding with worry. “I studied this type of curse when the Bastet was haunting Camelot and I could find no counter spells.”

Merlin gasps, tucks in his lips as if to hold back from making more noise. His eyes grow wet with tears.

“Morgana can't have chanced upon an unbreakable curse,” Arthur says, chopping the air with his hand before turning on his heels and kicking a random stone.

“There's a temple on the Isle of Manaw,” Gaius says. “During Uther's youth, it housed a handful of priestesses of the Old Religion.”

“And they might know how to break the curse?” Arthur presses, needing to hear there's a solution to this quandary.

“If anyone can,” Gaius says, “they can.”

“Then we're off to the Isle of Manaw,” Arthur says, making mental preparations for the journey. 

“Arthur, you can't,” Merlin says. “You have Camelot to think about.”

“Camelot will be well looked after,” Arthur says. “You on the other hand can't be trusted to get as far as Manaw by yourself.”

“Arthur, you can't travel with me,” Merlin says, flailing his hands about. “I'm dangerous.”

“You know what's dangerous,” Arthur says, walking up to Merlin so he's standing chest to chest with him. “Your stupidity. It's a full on threat to mankind!”

They're still arguing over this, when they realise the sun has dipped behind the treeline, leaving the world in darkness.

Arthur grips Merlin by the shoulders, eyes almost as wide as saucers. “You haven't changed!”

Merlin bats his lashes several times, looks down at his body, then gives him an unfettered killer smile. “You're right, I haven't changed!” He turns towards Gaius. “Gaius, I haven't turned!”

Gaius walks over to Merlin, takes his pulse, examines him from head to foot. Merlin is still very much a man, not a hint of fur in sight. 

Merlin looks at Arthur over Gaius shoulder, and unfurls a second smile at him, one that's even toothier and more brilliant than the first.

Arthur's heart goes hot at that. He draws himself up and lets himself smirk, because he was right about not giving Merlin up. He's afraid, however, that his gaze must have softened too much, for Merlin is smiling at him through a veil of tears now, and has gone all mushy on him. The idiot doesn't look like he'll stop any time soon.

 

 

**** 

Morgana waves her hand and the door of the lake house flies open. “Tell me why I felt the curse break,” she demands of the old crone.

The old woman, huddled under a ragged black cloak, looks up. “The curse cannot be undone,” she says, a shifty look in her eyes.

“And yet it was,” Morgana says, clacking her tongue. “How's it possible?”

“The curse is meant to always hold,” the old crone says in a sing song voice, as if she's reciting old lore. “Unless...”

“Unless what?” Morgana says, twisting her hand so she's cutting the old crone's air off. “Please, do tell.”

When Morgana lets go of the spell, the woman slumps, short of breath. “There's a loophole.”

“And what's that?” Morgana asks, wondering how far the woman's played her. She'd enacted the curse before, she said. The girl was dead. Killed, she said. “What's this loophole of yours?”

“If someone recognises your soul while you're in your animal form,” the old crone says, spitting phlegm before she answers, “then they can break the curse.”

“Why wasn't I told of this?” Morgana says, grinding her teeth. She's sorely tempted to do away with this lying old bag. “Why didn't you say?”

The woman squints at her, one of her eyes, Morgana notices, is veiled across with a white film. “Because no one's managed to undo the curse before. It's impossible." The old woman wheezes as though she's exhausted her strength, but then reprises. "There's stipulation upon stipulation. You must succeed without being given clues or any type of help. If you know a spell's in place, then it doesn't count, even if you guess right. You must know the soul of the cursed person through and through, believe in their goodness, and speak their name with love written in your heart for the curse to release its hold on the victim”

Morgana whirls around, digging her nails in her palms. “Who?” she wonders. The boy has no one. He's just a lone dogsbody shacking up in Gaius' workshop. Who could have broken the curse? She cocks her head back. “Arthur, of course.”

“What did you say, my lady?” the old crone asks in a wheedling tone.

Morgana prowls to the door, turns around. “None of your business. Count yourself lucky I've spared you.” The only reason Morgana has is because this woman prays to the triple goddess and priestesses always protect the women who've devoted themselves to her. But the old crone needn't know she's that safe. “I won't next time.”

She makes the house rattle with a snap of her fingers, then stalks outside. She looks at the sun shining on the placid lake, at the rows of houses and fields that stretch out before her eyes. “Next time Merlin won't be so lucky.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween everyone!


End file.
